dom of God. It was henceforth his fundamental principle, that no man by such works as he might be able to accomplish from the standing-point of the law, could attain. a righteousness that would avail before God.' This maxim, which marks the opposition between his earlier and later views, it was his main object to develop in arguing with his Judaizing opponents. Now he certainly in this controversy first treated of the pya ropov as an observance of the ritual prescriptions of the law; for his adversaries wished to impose even these on the believing Gentiles as belonging to the true dikatorurn and as essential to fitness for the kingdom of God; and this it was which he would not allow. Yet from the standing-point of Judaism such a distinction between the ceremonial and moral law was not possible, for everything was contemplated as a divine command; both equally involved obedience to the divine revealed will, and both required a disposition of sincere piety. Though Paul in different passages and references had sometimes the ritual, and at other times the moral portion of the vóμoc especially in his thoughts, yet the same general idea lies always at the basis of his reasonings. When he had occasion, as in the Epistle to the Galatians, to impugn the justifying power and continued obligation of the ceremonial law, still his argumentation proceeds on the whole idea of the vóμoç. It is the idea of an externally prescribed rule of action, the law as commanding, but which by its commands can never produce an internal alteration in man. Satisfaction can be given to the law-which indeed is true of every law as such-only by perfect obedience. Now since no man is able to effect the obedience thus required by the divine law, it of course pronounces condemnation on all as guilty of its violation; Gal. iii. 10. This is true of the imperative moral law which is revealed in the conscience, not less than of particular injunctions of this law exhibited in the Old Testament theocratic form, as Paul himself applies it in the

1 The Pauline expression οὐ δικαιοῦται ἐνώπιον τοῦ θεοῦ ἐξ ἔργων νόμου or èk vóμov Tâσa σàpt, is a phrase which most probably Paul very soon formed, from the peculiar development of his Christian convictions, arising from the method of his conversion.

2 When Christ, in the Sermon on the Monnt, says that he came not to destroy the law or the prophets, but to fulfil, he certainly made no such distinction.

Epistle to the Romans to the law written on the hearts of men, the law of conscience, which, as he asserts, calls forth the consciousness of guilt in those to whom the vópos was not given in the external theocratic form.

In reference to the whole idea of the vous in the revelation of the divine requirements to Man in the form of an imperative law, the apostle says, Gal. iii. 21, that if it could make men inwardly alive, if it could impart a true internal life from which all goodness would spontaneously proceed, then it would be right to speak of a dialogun proceeding from the law. Yet in that case, if Man were truly in harmony with the requirements of the law in the constitution of his internal life, it could not be properly said that he obtained a righteousness available before God by the works of the law; for the external supposes the internal; the disposition of true righteousness is manifest of itself to the eye of Omniscience; the internal cannot proceed from the external, but the external must proceed from the internal. Still in this case, works corresponding to the requirements of the law would be the necessary marks of the truly righteous and of the righteousness that avails before God, of what is truly well-pleasing to God. But in the present condition of Man, this is nowhere to be found. The disposition corresponding to the requirements of the law does not exist in man, and an external law cannot produce a change internally, cannot communicate power for fulfilling its own commands, nor overcome the opposition that exists in the disposition. Even if a man be influenced by inferior motives,

1 This is acknowledged by Aristotle; ὅτι δεῖ τὰ δίκαια πράττοντας δικαίους γίνεσθαι.—τὰ πράγματα δίκαια λέγεται, ὅταν ᾖ τοιαυτα οἷα ἂν ὁ δίκαιος πράξειεν δίκαιος δε ̓ ἐστὶν οὐχ ὁ ταῦτα πράττων, ἀλλὰ καὶ ὁ οὕτω πράττων ὡς οἱ δίκαιοι πράττουσιν.-Eth. Nich. ii. 3. As Paul contrasts the standing-point of the righteousness of the law and that of true righteousness, so Aristotle contrasts the τὰ ὑπὸ τῶν νόμων τεταγμένα ποιεῖν, and the πῶς ἔχοντα πράττειν ἕκαστα, ὥστ ̓ εἶναι ἀγαθὸν, λέγω δ' οἷον διὰ προαίρεσιν (the φρονεῖν τὰ τοῦ πνεύματος, from which all right action must proceed; Rom. viii. 5.) But Christianity elevates the reference of the mind above the reflection of the good in the πраттóμeva to the avrò ayaedv, the original source and archetype of all good in God, to communion with God, and the exhibition of this communion in the actions of the life. It is the disposition of the truly righteous which refers everything to the glory of God. Morality is a manifestation and exhibition of the divine life. And Christianity points out the process of development through which a man, by means of regeneration, may attain to that ἀρετὴ which produces the right προαίρεσις.

by carnal fear or hope, by vanity which would recommend itself to God or man, to accomplish what is commanded according to appearance, still the disposition required by the spirit of the law would be wanting. The works resulting from such attempts, whether they related to the moral or ritual part of the vóμos, would want the disposition which is the mark of the genuine dukatorov, presenting itself before a holy God. It results from this connexion of ideas, that though pya vouov may in themselves be works which really exhibit the fulfilling of the law, they would be considered by Paul as acts of a merely superficial external, and not internal obedience, they would bear the impress of mere legality in opposition to true piety and morality. The pya vóμov are not classed with epya ayala but opposed to them; Eph. ii. 10. Of such a legal righteousness he speaks when he says, Phil. ii. 6, that in this respect he had been a Pharisee without blame, though viewing it afterwards from the Christian standingpoint he esteemed it as perfectly nugatory. Thus, in a twofold sense, Paul could say that by works of the law no man could be justified before God. Taking the expression works of the law in an ideal sense, no man can perform such works as are required by the law; taking it in an empirical sense, there are no works which are really performed on the standingpoint of the law, and correspond to its spirit and require

ments.

If the assertion of the insufficiency of the righteousness of the law be made without more exactly defining it, it may be supposed to mean, that the moral commands of the law exhibit only an inferior moral standing-point, and on that account can lead no one to true righteousness. According to this supposition, our judgment respecting the claims of Christianity would take a particular direction, and we should consider the exhibition of a complete system of morals, as forming its essential preeminence over the former dispensation. But from the manner in which Paul makes this assertion, it is evident that this is not his meaning. He never complains of the law as defective in this respect, but on the contrary eulogizes it as in itself holy and good; Rom. vii. 12. The single commandment of love which stands at the head of the vópo, contains in fact everything (Romans xiii. 9) essential to moral perfection, and whoever fulfilled this would be truly righteous.

And in the two first chapters of the Epistle to the Romans his aim is to prove that the Jews in relation to their oμoc, as well as the Gentiles in relation to the moral law inscribed on their hearts, were not wanting in their knowledge of what was good, but in the power of will to perform what they knew to be good. The reason why the law could not produce true righteousness, consisted in the fact that it presented goodness only in the form of an external command, and also in the relation of the command to the moral condition of those to whom the law was given. This leads us to the central point of the Pauline Anthropology; namely, human nature as estranged from the divine life and standing in opposition to the requirements of the law; whether the eternal moral law, or the law in its outward theocratical form: This opposition we must now examine more minutely.

That principle in human nature which strives against the fulfilment of the law, the apostle generally distinguishes by the name of the Flesh, and the man in whom this principle predominates, or the man whose mind is not yet transformed by Christianity, by the name of σαρκικὸς or τὰ τῆς σαρκὸς opov. He represents this principle striving against the law as a law in the members, which opposes the law of reason; he speaks of "the motions of sin in the members” which obstructed the fulfilment of the law acknowledged by the mind; Romans vii. 5. The body as the seat of sinful desires he calls the σῶμα τῆς ἁμαρτίας, Rom. vi. 6, the σῶμα τῆς σαρκὸς, Col. ii. 11. Hence we might conclude, that the apostle deduced sin from the opposition between sense and spirit in human nature, and that he considered evil as a necessary transition-point in the development of human nature, till spirit acquired the perfect ascendency. But this could not be the apostle's meaning, for he considered this conflict between reason and sense, not as founded in the original nature of man, but as the consequence of a free departure from his original destination, as something blameworthy; and here we see of what practical importance in the Pauline doctrine is the supposition of an original perfection in man and a fall from it. Hence we must consider in every instance, the preponderance of sensual inclination over reason, according to Paul's view, only as an essential consequence of the first moral disunion. There are indeed many things to be urged against the supposi

in man.

tion that when he specifies the cap as the source of sin, he meant nothing but sensuality in opposition to the spiritual principle In Gal. v. 20, among the works of the oap, he mentions divisions (dixoσraσía), which cannot be attributed to sensual impulses. It is possible, indeed, to argue in favour of such an interpretation by saying, that Paul had in view those divisions which he traced to sensual impulses, to a sensual way of thinking, to a Judaism that adhered to sensual objects, and opposed the more spiritual conceptions of Christianity. But it appears still more surprising that he traces everything in that erroneous tendency which he opposed in the church at Colossae to the σαρξ to a νοῦς σαρκικός ; and here it would be difficult to attribute everything to a sensual addictedness, for we meet on the contrary with a morbid striving at freedom from the senses, an ascetic tendency which would defraud the bodily appetites of their just claims. And even if in all these attempts we detected the workings of a refined sensuality, that tendency which, while cleaving to outward objects, could not rise to the pure inward religion of the spirit; still we find that in the Corinthian church also, the apostle traced to the cap everything which either openly or secretly opposed Christianity, not excepting even the speculative Grecian tendency, the σοφίαν ζητεῖν, which treated the simple gospel with contempt. From all these considerations, we may infer with certainty that something more than sensuality was included in the Pauline idea of caps. And it confirms this conclusion, that Paul not only uses the phrase κατὰ ἄνθρωπον περιπατεῖν as equivalent to κατὰ σάρκα περιπατεῖν, but also employs the designation ἄνθρωπος ψυχικός as equivalent to ἄνθρωπος σαρκικός, 1 Cor. ü. 14. All this relates only to the opposition of the Human to the Divine, whether the oap or the uxn,' against the θεῖον πνεῦμα. Paul detected in the philosophic conceit of the Greeks, which with all its striving could not pass beyond the bounds of earthly existence, and satisfied itself without finding

1 Paul indeed might distinguish the veûμa from the yuxǹ as a power inherent to human nature, which serves as an organ for the Divine, or for the Holy Spirit, and under that influence acquires a predominant activity. This may be inferred also from the trichotomy, (a threefold division of man) in 1 Thess. v. 23. According to that trichotomy, the uxios would be a person in whom, by the predominance of the lower powers of the soul, the higher, the subjective Tμeμa was depressed.